California sues Trump administration to preserve clean air rules

In the latest chapter of a long battle between California and President Donald Trump over environmental rules, California on Monday sued the Trump administration to preserve the state's strict emissions standards that require more electric cars and trucks, and also ban the sale of new gasoline-powered garden tools - from leaf blowers to chainsaws to lawn mowers.

"While President Trump may be content to pollute our air, threaten vulnerable communities and kick workers to the curb, California is not," state Attorney General Rob Bonta said. "We refuse to allow Trump and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to claw us back into the smog."

Bonta and environmental groups said the regulations are key to helping California continue to reduce harmful smog that worsens asthma, emphysema and heart disease. They also reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change, heat waves and wildfires.

Trump, on the other hand, has worked systematically since his first term to overturn and block California's efforts, siding with industry groups which say the state's rules are impractical and costly.

Because other states often copy California's environmental standards, at stake is what kind of cars, trucks and landscaping equipment Americans will see in showrooms and hardware stores for years to come. Monday's lawsuit was the 72nd time since Trump began his second term in January 2025 that California has sued his administration, with a record of winning 80% so far, Bonta said.

At issue now is the fine print of one of America's landmark environmental laws, the Clean Air Act.

For more than 50 years since President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in 1970, federal law has allowed California, which often has had the nation's smoggiest skies in Southern California and the Central Valley, to set its own tailpipe standards for cars and trucks. Those can be stricter than federal standards, and other states are allowed to copy California's standards.

Since automakers don't want to build different models of cars for different states, that has meant other states, and then the federal government eventually, copy California's regulations.

But there's a catch: The Clean Air Act says California can only set stricter standards if it receives permission, called "a waiver" from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Since the 1970s, Republican and Democratic presidents have routinely approved more than 75 of those waivers - and vehicles today are dramatically cleaner than they were a generation ago, with catalytic converters, on-board computer systems and other technology that has cut tailpipe pollution by 95% or more compared to models from the 1970s and 1980s.

In 2008, however, the administration of President George W. Bush denied one of California's waivers for the first time. Bush blocked rules that fellow Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had put in place requiring automakers selling cars in California to cut tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases by making more fuel-efficient vehicles. Bush's EPA Administrator, Stephen Johnson, said greenhouse gases were a global issue and that California did not need its own specific regulations.

California sued. But when President Barack Obama took office in 2009, he reversed course and approved California's waiver. A similar pattern occurred during Trump's first term, when his EPA denied several of California's waivers, California sued, and then President Joe Biden reversed course and allowed them.

That pattern was in play again earlier this month. On June 12, Trump's EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, announced that he had classified four of California's waivers as "rules," and he sent them to the Republican-controlled Congress, which can attempt to block them with a majority vote.

The four waivers affected are Schwarzenegger's greenhouse gas regulations from 2008 that Obama approved; another from the administration of former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2012 called "Advanced Clean Cars I" that mandated automakers to make a certain number of hybrid and electric vehicles for sale in California - which Obama also approved; the Biden Administration's 2022 reinstatement of Brown's 2012 waiver after the first Trump Administration had blocked it; and a ban on the sale of new gas-burning leaf blowers, lawn mowers, chain saws, string trimmers and other garden equipment that Gov. Gavin Newsom's Air Resources Board put in place in 2022. Biden's EPA allowed it, just days before Biden left office.

On Monday, Newsom, Bonta and the Air Resources Board sued the Trump EPA and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin in U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.

The lawsuit contends that the EPA had no authority to classify the waivers as "rules" and that Congress cannot overturn them. It argues that the 1996 law allowing Congress to overturn rules 60 days after their passage by agencies, which is called the Congressional Review Act, applies only to federal agencies, not states.

Zeldin and the EPA laid low on Monday.

"In keeping with longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation," the EPA press office said in a statement.

Last year, however, the EPA took the same action. Both the House and Senate at that time voted to overturn Newsom's landmark ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars after 2035. The House vote was 246 to 164, with 35 Democrats - many of them in competitive districts in states like Michigan, Ohio, Florida and Texas - joining 211 Republicans.

Trump signed the resolution last June and said in a statement: "Our Constitution does not allow one state special status to create standards that limit consumer choice and impose an electric vehicle mandate upon the entire nation."

California sued, saying the Clean Air Act clearly does allow California to set tougher standards than the rest of the nation because it has the most people, some of the worst air pollution, and began regulating auto emissions in the 1950s, before the EPA was even created. That lawsuit is still pending.

The decision two weeks ago by the EPA to send four more waivers to Congress to overturn came after industry groups asked for it. In October, a coalition that included the California Landscape Contractors Association, the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America and the Tree Care Industry Association sent a letter to the EPA urging the agency to overturn California's regulations requiring the sale of electric-only lawn equipment in the state.

They said the mandate was "cost prohibitive and impractical," adding that "engine and equipment manufacturers have lost millions of unit sales since 2024."

The California Air Resources Board noted, however, that a typical gasoline-powered lawn mower generates as many smog-forming emissions in one hour as a gasoline-powered car traveling 300 miles. Environmental groups on Monday backed California's latest lawsuit. Congress now has 60 days to vote. If Democrats take either chamber in November, that could block the EPA plan.

"We stand firmly with California as it seeks to protect people's lives, health, and wallets against these unlawful and deeply harmful attacks," said attorney Peter Zalzal, with the Environmental Defense Fund.

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This story was originally published June 22, 2026 at 6:13 PM.